1983

I didn't have a solid plan for the future when I graduated from college in May of 1983. Since being in school was really the only thing I knew how to do, I applied to a few graduate programs, one of which was Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA. ODU had a rolling admissions policy at the time, and so I hadn't heard from them by the time I packed up all my stuff and drove south to my mom's place in Virginia Beach. It was probably just as well I didn't have any set plans; things were about to get complicated. 

After attending my graduation ceremony, my dad had flown down to Florida to visit his sister for a few days before returning to Saudi. While he was there, he experienced some severe abdominal pain. A doctor diagnosed him with Crohn's disease and recommended surgery to clean up the probable bowel abscesses that were likely causing the pain. My father called my mom and asked if he could come to Virginia Beach for treatment; my brother and sister and I would all be there for the summer, and he was worried about having major surgery with none of us nearby.

Before heading to my mom's, I had spent a couple of weeks visiting friends, and I rolled into town the day after my dad's surgery, which had not gone well. His appendix had burst in the OR, and after removing it, the surgeon had closed without any further procedures. At least that's what we knew. When the three of us went to visit him in the hospital that evening, he broke it to us that they had actually discovered stage 4 colon cancer. 

The initial treatment plan was six weeks of daily radiation, and so my dad rented a house four blocks from my mother's place, and my brother and I moved in with him. His radiation therapy was in Norfolk, 25 minutes away. My sister was still in high school, living with my mom, and my brother had a summer job in the kitchen of a motel down the beach, and so my role was to keep house and drive him there every morning in my yellow VW Rabbit. 

The shape of that summer was uncertainty, waiting around in limbo to see what would happen next, without much control over it. Dad spent the rest of his time in his pajamas on the living room couch smoking, reading the paper, and watching TV. The radiation was tiring, and he didn't feel like doing much else. I cooked and read and went to the beach. 

He wasn't cured by the end of the summer; although the radiation had been somewhat effective, the prognosis was vague, but not good. He would be screened every 4 months to check the progression of his disease, and they figured he might have a year. My dad was determined to return to work, though, and that's what he did. In the meantime, I heard from Old Dominion. I was accepted into their MA program in English literature, and so I packed up my stuff and moved down the street to live with my mom and my sister and continue my daily commute to Norfolk.

My dad defied the odds, continuing to work for another two years before surgery forced him to retire on disability, and then living another two years beyond that. I got my masters just in time for my sister and I to move back in with him for those last couple of years. 

But those were other summers and other stories.